Oregon’s image takes another hit

Thursday

Last summer’s quote was more catchy. What Cliff Harris told the state trooper may never be topped.

But what an unnamed Oregon football player told ESPN The Magazine about marijuana use by the Ducks — by a lot of Ducks, he insisted — won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

“Some of us smoke,” the player said, “and then we went out and won the Rose Bowl. Know what I mean?”

Yes, I think we do: You’re saying the Ducks smoked it all, and then smoked ’em all.

Or at least, that’s the impression given by the article. On some levels, it’s hard to get too worked up about it. If accurate, it’s not exactly startling.

The focus was Oregon, but it could probably have been any college football team, anywhere. Or any college campus.

Do the Ducks have a pot problem? Does anyone care?

According to ESPN, current and former players estimated “between 40 and 60 percent” of team members use dope. There’s no way to check, but a recent survey conducted by the NCAA showed 22.6 percent of college athletes and 26.7 percent of football players used marijuana.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the real Oregon percentage is more in line with the survey — or if the actual number nationwide is closer to the anonymous Oregon guesstimates.

But that’s not the point. Neither is the inevitable argument about whether marijuana use should be considered a problem, anyway.

What’s undeniable is this: Oregon’s image just took another hit.

All you needed to see was the flood of jokes that followed the article’s publication. Here’s one:

Just think how fast Chip Kelly’s offense would be if only ...

Or you could simply read former Duck Reuben Droughns’ actual, no-joking comment about Eugene: “It’s the weed capital of the world. Long dreads. Girls with hairy armpits. Where there’s hippies, there’s weed.”

Chamber of Commerce stuff there, huh?

Sure, Oregon athletic department honchos cringed. In response, the school released a statement from athletic director Rob Mullens, and then a flurry of documents.

Typically, prying information like that from Oregon can take months. But in a matter of hours, we were fed drug-testing data and updated policies, procedures and penalties.

It was all designed to show the Ducks take illegal substances very seriously. They recently implemented a more formalized set of drug-testing procedures. The guidelines are far more stringent, and the penalties appear to have more teeth — although a change from three-strikes-and-you’re-out to four is difficult to justify.

But give ’em the benefit of the doubt. This isn’t easy to handle. According to the article, players say Kelly “cracked down” on marijuana use. State law prohibits random testing, but the coach apparently finds enough probable cause to keep the Ducks on edge.

And yet a significant number do it anyway?

We get it, pot permeates college campuses. It’s pervasive on college football and basketball teams — and pro football and basketball teams, too. Eugene might be especially permissive.

OK, Eugene is exceptionally permissive.

It’s still illegal, and against athletic department rules. Which is why the reflexive defense Wednesday by some fans was amusing. You wonder if they see the conflict in their position.

If Ducks are smoking dope, they aren’t simply breaking the law. They’re also defying Kelly. So whose side are those fans on: the players’ or the coach’s?

But the funniest thing was the insistence by a couple of readers that the ESPN story was not bad publicity. They tried to convince me it might actually help recruiting (and all this time we thought it was the uniforms).

I’m not sure there’s a crisis, or if it’s worse at Oregon than anywhere else. The issue felt overcooked. Next someone will discover and report that it rains a lot around here. (Although the article suggested the weather might have been a reason some guys lit up.)

But while “We smoked it all” wasn’t good, you almost couldn’t help but laugh.

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